I can feel it; the depression. It’s creeping in slowly. It’s black tentacle-like wisps of nothingness that starts at my ankles and wraps itself around me slowly, yet tightly in its grasp. The more I fight it, the faster it wraps, and the tighter it squeezes.

Kind of like the ending scene on “FernGully” when the faeries all come together to trap Hexxus. They blast their little faerie light and the vines slither all the way up, encasing Hexxus until it strangles him. That’s what it’s like.

I’m really trying to fight it off, though. I try every single year. I’m unsuccessful every single year. The crying started last night when I went to bed. Baby tears that didn’t last long, but they are just the beginning of a long fall/winter season of crying. As soon as the temperature falls below 60 at night, the sadness will increase its ebb and flow. Why does this always happen?

The headaches start. It seems that with each new season brings a new ailment along with it. I’ve never been one of those to complain about “what hurt”, but I’m discovering that the older I get, the more things hurt that didn’t hurt before. My grandmother paces the house when it’s about to rain; it makes her entire body hurt. I feel bad for her, but I have a lot of patients that have full-body arthritis, and there’s nothing they can do to ease the pain.

Their pain is mostly on the outside. I feel that mine is a constant internal struggle. I must remain true to who I am, and at the same time fight off the demons that are what make me who I am. There are days that getting out of bed is a huge task. I do it, because it’s expected of me, and because the bills must be paid. I do it because I have a teenager that needs to know that everything we have is a result of hard work and dedication. I want so much more for her than who I am. I want her to be great. I don’t want her to feel this kind of melancholy. I want to give her everything that she wants, but my bank account doesn’t always allow that.

My husband will probably fly up at the end of October to see his kids for four days. I can’t go because I can never get that kind of time off of work. It’s pathetic. I feel pathetic for knowing how sad I’m going to be when he isn’t at home with me. I feel like I should be the kind of person that can function with her husband gone for a few days. I haven’t been away from him for more than a few hours since he came back and we got married. I have abandonment issues, this much I know. I miss him when I’m not with him – even if only for a few hours.

This morning, one of the first things to show up on my Facebook was a shout-out from The Abuser to his wife for their anniversary.

“I knew from the first time I saw you again in 2008 that we were brought back together for a reason, your dreams all the coincidences it was almost ‘written in the stars…..'”

Oh hey! I remember that time, too!! That was the time I was sitting at home, repeatedly calling and calling your cell phone at three in the morning because you weren’t home. You had “Gone to Chad’s house to hang out with him and Adam.” and said you would be home by midnight. When 1:00 rolled around, I started calling. Then I called Chad’s phone, then I called Adam’s phone. I paced around the front yard until five in the morning with this dreaded feeling in my stomach. I knew. I knew deep down that you weren’t at Adam or Chad’s house.

At around 8:30 that morning your truck rolls down the gravel road, I’m pacing in the yard, on the phone with my lunatic mother because I didn’t know what else to do.

You got out of the truck and shut your door, and told me you fell asleep at Chad’s house watching Pirates of the Caribbean. Like it was no big deal. Like you weren’t lying through you piece of shit face. Like you hadn’t spent the night in the arms of the cock-eyed crackhead.

I remember like it was yesterday. Are we both married now, and happier with our lives? I know that I am. I suppose you are too. But why do I harp on this?

Because it hurt then. It hurt like I have never been hurt before. It hurt to know that I was worth SO VERY LITTLE to you, that you so easily found yourself with another woman. I did everything under the sun for you, including take your verbal and physical abuse for three years. I didn’t deserve that, and I didn’t deserve to get cheated on. And YOU didn’t deserve to get married to the woman that you so carelessly tossed me aside for. You don’t deserve your happiness, you don’t deserve the life you’ve built for yourself. You deserve nothing, and she deserves even less than nothing.

There will always be a part of me that hurts because of what you did. There will also always be a part of me that wishes I could beat her ass for going after someone that she knew had a wedding date set. I could beat your ass for doing it to me too. But you hurt me. You killed something inside of me that day that I will never get back.

But yeah, happy anniversary you bunch of lying, cheating, manipulative, homewrecking assholes. I hope it’s a great day.

One of the things on my bucket list, that I’ve always wanted to do, is to go see a Clairvoyant/Medium. So, Friday after work that’s what I did. I had scheduled this appointment two weeks ago, and then found out more recently that this woman was the one that performed the marriage ceremony for my dad and his ex-wife (my half-sisters mom.) I didn’t tell her about the link, because I didn’t want to give anything away. I’m all about trying to figure out if who I’m dealing with is a fraud (you know, like that infomercial black lady Miss Cleo from the 90’s.)

I arrived at her business. Her little puppy twinkie came out to greet me. My medium was very open and welcoming. I immediately had a ‘nice’ feeling about her. (I rely on my intuition for everything.) I sat down and as discussed in our emails, I had told her that I was interested in whatever it is that came up through spirit – whether it was a connection with a deceased person, or my spirit guides speaking up. I’m pretty open for whatever.

So, I sat on the couch. Twinkie jumped up there with me and we hung out. She sat in a chair across from me and held these two purple crystal’s in her hand, and sat back and just closed her eyes for a moment. She asked me when my birthday was, I told her I was a Leo. She sat back again, closed her eyes, and then opened them and started talking very quickly. I was allowed to record what she said, which was pretty awesome because I can reference it now and really get a feel for everything she said.

Medium: It’s actually kind of ironic that you’re a Leo. Leo’s are very ‘in the spotlight’ and ‘look at me, look at me!’, whereas you’re a very ‘in the corner, in the dark’ kind of person. The kind of person that doesn’t want to be noticed, doesn’t want to be praised, the kind of humble person with the big heart that stays in the shadows. Leo’s have huge hearts. They are so giving. But most Leo’s want the world to know what it is that they are doing. They love admiration, praise, and have this kind of self-centeredness about them – which isn’t really a bad thing, because they are also selfless in the things they do. But, you’re unique in a way. You also carry a lot of emotional baggage from your past. You are the kind of person that wants to ensure that everyone around you is happy before you can be happy. You often neglect yourself, because you feel like you aren’t worthy of the attention that you should be giving yourself. What was your childhood like?

Me: Total Chaos.

Medium: *Flips through a deck of cards, looks at one, puts it down.* What is this about your father?

Me: That makes sense. It makes a lot of sense that it’s the first question you would ask.

Medium: He comes through. But, it’s not like that of spirit that has been crossed over for a long period of time. It’s kind of static.

Me: He recently passed, yes.

Medium: *Get’s this very strange look* ….. Do I ….. this is going to sound silly. This can’t be. Do I know him?

Me: It’s not silly. Yes, you do know him. I didn’t find out until recently that you did. You married him and Michele some years ago. Michele that lived with you for a while afterward.

Medium: Your father is Will? *Stunned look* Your father has passed? Oh my God. *Glassy eyes. She sits back in her chair.* Oh my God. He was sick? I can’t believe this. I didn’t even know he had another daughter. Your his daughter?

Me: Not many people know about me. He didn’t talk about me a lot, it seems. None of his friends knew about me either.

Medium: I’m sorry. I need a minute. *Stares out of the window for a bit*

Me: It’s okay. We can focus on other things. He is so newly passed that I doubt he will be able to come through this soon. He was terminally sick, but in a lot of denial as to how sick he was.

Medium: Some spirits cross over with no problem. Others go to what I like to refer to as a ‘Spiritual Hospital’. They are working on their transition, and sometimes it can take a while to become fully ready for that transition.

Me: I feel like, as he was dying … it was like his body was there, still breathing … but he wasn’t there all of the time.

Medium: That’s exactly what happens. The soul kind of tethers back and forth between their body and the spirit world. It’s the same when you’re born. Your soul goes back and forth for the first few years, and it’s about five years after birth that it finally settles down into it’s permanent ‘earth home’. That’s why you don’t remember a lot when you’re a child. Or if you do remember things from a young age, it isn’t everything because you’re soul is going back and forth between this world and the spirit world.

I asked her about how many spirit guides we have, and who they are. She said our biggest spirit guide is actually our higher selves, on the astral plane. She said “I know it sounds weird, but who knows you better than yourself? It applies to your spirit guide as well.” She said that different spirit guides step in at different times depend on what you need.

She advised me to get monthly massages as an outlet for the emotional things that I keep storing that have no outlet. She also suggested a type of yoga that’s done in a room kept at 105 degrees, with relaxing music to kind of .. cleanse the soul, I guess.

She said that I need to be doing work with children (not young children, but more teen-focused work) like a crisis help-line or suicide help-line. She said that kind of work is my calling. She flipped the cards and said school is not in my future. Thank God.

She picked up on the fact that I’m an empath. She said I’m a healer. She also said that I’m a lot more psychic than I know, but I have to get rid of some of this spiritual baggage that I carry before I can really explore the full potential of my abilities.

It’s kind of difficult to keep encountering people that he personally knew, that have no idea of my existence. That shit hurts. Why did he never mention me to people? Why is it that everyone knew of my half-sister in his life, but not me? Why wasn’t I a worthy topic of conversation. I know he was a private person, but everyone knew about my half-sister. That shirt hurts, man.

I can feel the seasonal depression creeping in. I’m fighting it with all that I have, but I know that it’s useless, as it always wins and I always spend sporadic days in bed, or alone in the sunroom on the verge of crying – for the next six months.

People think I hate winter just to hate on it. If I lived in the south of Florida, I wouldn’t hate the winter. It’s always above 70 degrees down there.

There’s something that happens to me when the temperature drops. I don’t know why this is. I have even wondered if something happened in a past life that is causing some melancholy that I can’t explain, but can only feel internally.

I’m going to go see a very renowned medium on Friday. I’ve never had a reading and am very interested in knowing more about myself, and who I am. I want to see if she can pick up on the fact that I’m an empath … maybe explain why I feel things so deeply from other people. Perhaps she will have some tools to help me control when I feel things and when I don’t have to.

This time of the year, I always start to feel lonely. In a room full of people, I will feel like nobody sees me. This includes my husband. I already have difficult on some days processing that he and I don’t have a very physical marriage. He hates touching and I love it. I love cuddling and spooning and holding hands. He doesn’t like any of those things. In the summer, the depression about it comes few and far between. In the winter, I feel like a lost soul that married in name only, and I’m really just alone, save living with a man that is my best friend.

Don’t misunderstand; I couldn’t pick a more perfect human being to share my life with. I truly believe that about my husband. He’s protective, he’s a family-man, he’s funny, and witty, and annoyingly smart. He tells me every day that he loves me. This whole thing just kind of proves to me that there is no perfect person, anywhere. I’ve had the cuddling and the affection from others – and along with that came the cheating and the betrayal and the heartache. I suppose, as with everything in life, there have to be sacrifices and compromises. I just don’t know how to cure the craving of physical intimacy.

I was thinking that maybe I can get monthly massages. It sounds kind of corny, but at least there’s physical touch, even if it’s done by someone that I have no feelings for.

I know that my husband loves me, and I know that he’s happy in our marriage. Still, I can’t help that the old demons from relationships-past that come to haunt my mind, and tell me that he won’t touch me because of the way I look. The Abuser wouldn’t rub my back or anything until I “got down to the weight I was supposed to be.”

Speaking of – The Abuser put an old Time Hop post up of his wife from a few years ago, back when she was a little bit thicker than the crackhead look she has going right now. In the post he put “Chub Chub – how I miss this look, before all of life’s stress took over.” I wanted to virtually slap him in the face. He hated that I was overweight! He made sure to tell me quite often how disgusting I looked. Now that a stiff wind could blow his wife down the street, he misses her being bigger? Seriously?? Oh, so it took him getting a skeleton for a wife to appreciate a little cushion? Ungrateful sack of garbage.

Back when they split up, just before I got married, he made sure to mention that my weight didn’t bother him – that whatever it is he said when we were together was something that stemmed from his insecurities. I called bullshit on that. He has a six-pack without even trying. He can eat all of the garbage food he wants, and that six-pack never goes away. But still, I find it ironic that he has the skinny he so desired, and now he wishes she had weight on her. Jumping fences and grass and all of that greener pasture shit.

Things have been pretty steady and boring lately. I’m not complaining, though it’s hard to get on here and write about things when there is absolutely nothing going on.

We are keeping an eye on Hurricane Irma. Living in North Carolina, we never know what’s going to happen when hurricanes are in the vicinity. I remember Hurricane Fran in 1996. My grams and I were down at Myrtle Beach and we hauled ass back to NC because they were expecting Fran to directly hit Myrtle. At the last second that big bitch turned north and came in through Wilmington. We live about two hundred miles inland from the beach, but the eye-wall came directly over my house. Tornado’s spun in the yard and ripped tree’s up. We had no power for two weeks. Currently, my husband and I are on the look-out for a generator that can power the house, because I’m not sitting in the damn house without a fan on. I will become a beast.

We bought a pretty large sectional with some of the money my dad left for me. I caught up on all of our bills, and still have money leftover, which is a very nice feeling – and a feeling that I’ve never had before. I did a lot of online and in-store clothes shopping (I haven’t bought new clothes in about six years) and had forgotten just how expensive a wardrobe is. I look at the six hundred dollars worth of clothes and wonder why it doesn’t even look like that much. It’s not like I went to Nordstrom or anything. Jesus.

I used some of my dad’s money to give my brother five hundred bucks, because … well he’s my brother. (We have different dad’s). I sent a friend of mine that just had a baby a hundred bucks through Facebook because they are having a hard time making ends meet. My usual cynical self of “don’t procreate if you can’t financially handle it” were hushed to a dull roar. Just because I’m currently not struggling, doesn’t mean I haven’t had to purposely overdraft my bank account for three months consecutive to make ends meet. I get aggravated that I don’t have endless money to help everyone I know.

You can already feel Fall in the air. The leaves are trying to turn colors. I can feel my seasonal melancholy settling in. There will be days that I will lie in the bed and not want to get up because it’s cold outside, or snow is on the way in the winter. I hate cold weather. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I become such a bitch in the winter. I hate snow, ice, cold blowing wind, cold rain, and not being able to go to the beach and swim when I want.

I keep having dreams about The Abuser. I want them to go away. It’s pissing me off.

I had to finally block Country Boy from talking to me anymore. His crazy is showing and I can’t even wrap my head around how to associate with that.

He blames his irrational thinking on the fact that the woman he is in love with refuses to leave her partner for him. He blames his craziness on his cheating whore of a ‘girlfriend’ that IS TAKEN BY ANOTHER MAN as the reason that he is so angry and thinks about gutting a cop like a prized pig. How does that even make sense? Other than the fact that I TOLD HIM she would never leave her partner. Other than the fact that I told him he was an idiot and that she was playing nothing but mind-games with him ….. he chose not to listen to me and now he’s hurting. I get that. But when you think this kind of shit, it goes beyond the normal level of slightly psychotic. I’ve tried to help him and give him advice, but then this kind of stuff happens. It reminds of why I broke up with him in the first place, and makes me thankful that I got out when I did.

Other than that, not much is going on. I come home from work, cook dinner, laugh and make fun of my husband, and then go to bed. Me and my kid have done some shopping. She spent almost a hundred bucks at Barnes and Noble and another hundred at Hot Topic. I love how well-rounded she is in her interest. She is in the Drama Club at school, plans on trying out for basketball, and then doing her second year in soccer in the Spring. She is everything I never was, and I hope that she is going to be everything I am not.

Sunday, for the first time in a long time, I went out to a friends house for a surprise birthday party for one of our mutual friends. I haven’t seen any of them in six months or more. When questioned about where I’ve been, I usually replied with “I hate people.” or “My husband and I just usually keep to ourselves.” Both statements are true. Outside of doing things with my husband and my kid, I just prefer to be alone. Crowds aggravate me. Screaming children are like nails on a chalkboard. Undisciplined kids make me want to kick the parents asses for allowing such behavior. I always feel like when I leave the room, someone will start talking about me for whatever reason. Paranoia? Probably. It’s happened before, though.

An ex-boyfriend of mine described me in such a way, not too long ago, that really made me think about the kind of person that I am. He told me I was a gift, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in quiet reserve. I told him that I didn’t think I was so mysterious. I’ve always thought myself to be pretty straight forward.

He told me that I have this quiet observation about myself. You are one of those people that take everything in, and really think before you open your mouth to speak. You contemplate how a situation makes you feel, how what you say will make others feel, and one can simply look at you and tell that whatever comes out of your mouth is only an eighth of what is going on in your head.

He made mention of the times we would argue. He would rant and rave about whatever it was. I would sit there and take it all in. You have this way about you. You take the shit that people throw at you, and absorb it for yourself. You have this unknowing thing that you do, and in the end it makes the giver feel like a complete asshole.

Typically when people fight, it’s a screaming match till the end. I’m not that kind of person. I listen, I allow my feelings to get hurt, and I remain very quiet until I can process everything that has been said. Only then will I speak. Only then will someone know how I really feel about the entire situation.

Since I can remember, people have perceived me to be cold and aloof. It couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m actually a pretty funny person, and enjoy making people laugh. But I just can’t bring myself to open my mouth and let things fly out without carefully constructing what I need to say. Words and actions can be forgiven, but you can’t take back words once you’ve spoken them. And people that say “I didn’t mean it, I was just mad” are fooling themselves. When you’re mad, you say exactly what you mean. Same thing when you’re drunk. Loose lips and all of that.

I guess that since I am who I am, and I’ve always been this way, it didn’t strike me that I’m an odd person. I don’t think there is anything wrong with taking in everything around you before you come to a definitive conclusion.

My ex, previous to my husband has been in a world of pain lately. The woman that he thought was going to leave her spouse for him has gone ghost. I have told him for a year that this was a bad idea. I told him that what she was saying and doing were complete and total bullshit. I told him that he was going to end up in a lot of pain. He told me I was wrong. I kept quiet after that. I told him I didn’t want to talk about her anymore if he wasn’t going to listen to anything I had to say about the situation. He didn’t mention much of anything until she started putting up cute things and messages on her Facebook for public viewing directed towards her spouse. He’s left sitting in the dark, hurting and alone. I asked him what he thought was going to happen. Surely you didn’t think you two would ride off into the sunset together, did you? It’s a very rare case that the other person becomes the chosen person. It just doesn’t happen that way. And if it does, there’s a lot more to it than it just happening. And trust me, I thought long and hard about what I was going to say, before I said it to him.

Now he’s off to lick his wounds, smoke a lot of pot, drink a lot. If he would have listened to me from the beginning, he wouldn’t be going through this pain. It frustrates me to no end.

My brother’s grandmother found out that she has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. She’s going to start chemo next week, mostly to give her a bit more quantity, though there’s nothing she can do about the quality of her life. She’s already throwing up any solid food she eats, immediately after eating it. The cancer has spread into her stomach.

I called her ‘granny’ as I was growing up, so I will still refer to her as that, on here. Though I have called her by her real name for years. She’s my ‘granny’ legally, because my step-dad legally adopted me when I was five. She never liked me, and she never bothered to hide her disdain for me, mostly because she hated my mother and because I wasn’t actual blood to their precious family-line. Not that they are of some regal stature by any means. That family is a typical judgmental southern baptist at its core.

My first thought upon my brother calling me and telling me that granny has cancer was “Karma really is a bitch.” I instantly felt bad about feeling that way. Nobody deserves cancer. My brother is torn up about it, my step-dad is devastated. I’m still trying to come to terms that my biological dad was taken from me at fifty years old, and we only had a year to form some kind of relationship with one another. At least my brother and my step-dad have had their entire lives with their mother – and her conniving, scheming ways. I don’t hold anything against her, but I don’t like her, either. At all.

This is the same woman who looked at me when I was 12 and told me I was going to be a whore just like my mother. My mom had cheated on my step-dad and moved out. My step-dad was devastated and of course mommy-dearest came running to the rescue. She had a lot of words of wisdom, and didn’t hold her tongue when it came to what she thought about me. At 12 years old, I didn’t understand why she would hate me so much. As I got older I realized that it was because I wasn’t really blood, and because I am my mothers daughter.

I’ve seen her a handful of times in the past twenty years. When my brother is having some kind of get-together we will cross paths, though we never stop to catch up. Neither of us really cares about what’s going on in the others life. My step-dad doesn’t talk to me. His wife doesn’t talk to me. I have no relationship with their younger kids (except that his son told me I was ugly a few years ago, while standing on the stairs.) …. I told him that Santa wouldn’t come see him if he wasn’t being nice. He told me he didn’t care. I wanted to push that little bastard down the stairs. It’s saying something of your mental stability when a five year old can tear your ego to shreds in a matter of seconds.

My Granny used to sit on the first row at church, high and mighty in her judgement. If you weren’t wearing your Sunday best, you were talked about after the preacher got finished telling us about how we are supposed to love our neighbor. They sounded like little hens clucking in a circle. A newcomer showed up at our church one Sunday in a nice pair of jeans. He had an earring in his ear. Good-looking guy. He didn’t have any dressy clothes to wear. But he may as well have been the devil himself for all those women cared. How dare he show up in the house of the Lord wearing jeans?!!?

Granny is the reason I turned away from organized religion. Her judgement of others is the reason that I question how the Bible can really be something to study when there are people out there that read it and act like this. Why can’t God love everyone, regardless of their religion. Why would He only love people like granny, when there are so many other people in the world better than she is, and more tolerating?

Her inability to accept me as I was growing up used to be a hard pill to swallow. First my biological dad, then my biological grandfather, then my step-dad, and then my granny. All of them just gave up on me, or never believed in me, or never wanted me. I think, once I hit my late 20’s I finally realized that it didn’t matter; I don’t need their love or approval. Now my biological dad is dead, my biological grandfather has dementia so bad that he doesn’t know what century he’s in, my step-dad has Crohn’s disease to the point that his quality of life is suffering, and now my granny has stage 4 cancer. I can’t help but wonder if this is happening because of the kind of people they are, or if it’s just really a stroke of bad luck.